14 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Rocky’

Stallone was inspired to write ‘Rocky’ after watching a Muhammad Ali fight.

While living meagerly in the Valley, the then-unknown actor attended the 1975 championship match between legend Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. “For one brief moment, this supposed stumblebum [Wepner] turned out to be magnificent,” Stallone once said of the fight, in which Wepner lasted 19 rounds before Ali took home the win. “[Wepner] did something extraordinary. I said, ‘Now ‘that’ is what I need as a catalyst for an idea: A man who’s going to stand up to life and take one shot ,and maybe go the distance.” Stallone took inspiration from the match, and three days later, he had the “Rocky” script.